Referring to content from external sources

There may be certain cases where you will have to quote content from external sources for the completion of the article. For example, consider you are writing an article on "Indian Railway budgets 2011". You could evaluate the budget and produce a good article from your own thoughts about the merits and issues you see in the 2011 railway budget.

But it may be required to quote few lines the railway minister said in the budget presentation to make your article more useful. In that case, you can present it like this:

During the budget speech, railway minister Mrs. Mamata Banerjee said: "An All India Security Help Line on a single number has been set up to facilitate passenger security and is likely to become operational this year. A comprehensive bill has been drafted to empower RPF to deal with passenger related offences and it is likely to be placed before Parliament soon"

Note that the above line clearly says it is a quote from another person and also the quoted text is shown in Italics to indicate which portion is quoted.

When you clearly indicate that it is a reference from another source, it is okay, provided such content is not a significant portion of your article. You can have a small percentage of your content as references from other sources.

However, using such references become a problem in many cases including:

- when you do not clearly indicate it is a reference from another source- when such referenced content is big pieces of content compared to the original content in your article- when the references content is not really necessary in your post

Editors may not read complete article and analyze before they are approved. We may quickly approve or reject the post depending on our trust on the author, depending on the credibility of the author.

In case of new authors, accidents may happen and editors may not realize that certain lines are references from other sources. In such cases, you may contact us through the forum and we will definitely restore your posts and posting rights.